The Bus Fare and the Algorithm
Nigerians fear AI. Bus fares hit ₦1,431. Courts prepare. Ekpa's jailing. ₦13.3 trillion wiped out in June's worst month.
Good morning,
A man in Zamfara pays ₦1,878 for a single bus ride. That is not a luxury trip. That is just getting to work. For a minimum-wage earner, that fare eats into a budget already strangled by food inflation and electricity tariffs. For a family of five in Lagos taking two buses each way, the monthly transport bill now exceeds ₦30,000.
City bus fares rose to an average of ₦1,431 per trip in May, up 38.6% from the same time last year. Motorcycle fares jumped even harder, 52.4%. Domestic airfare? ₦157,552. Kano State recorded the highest at ₦184,139. Transport operators are passing on higher fuel and maintenance costs. The losers are commuters, especially low-income Nigerians who are now paying more to get to work than the work itself pays them.
And yet, when I think about what is coming, transport costs feel almost manageable compared to what the algorithms are preparing for us.
Two-thirds of Nigerians are extremely or very concerned about AI being used to mislead voters in the 2027 election. That alarm cuts across age, gender and education, it is not an elite concern. But here is the thing that should keep you up at night: the zone most exposed to manipulation, the South East, is the least concerned. The zone has the highest social media reliance at 82.5% and the highest non-verification rate at 42.7%. Yet it records the lowest AI concern in the country, at 38.9%. A zone where almost no one cross-checks what they read is also a zone where almost no one thinks checking is necessary.
Social media, dominated by WhatsApp, is the primary news source for 52.1% of Nigerians. On most platforms, especially in African markets, AI content moderation is either absent or ineffective. The pipeline from AI-generated content to mass consumption is essentially unobstructed. The Tinubu AI voice note of May 2026 was a warning shot. The technology is not coming, it is here. Nigeria’s legal framework was drafted before deepfakes existed. The pending AI Commission bill lacks enforcement provisions. INEC held a workshop in March, but that is a start, not a system. The window to build that system before the election is closing.
While we are talking about 2027, the courts are already preparing. Chief Judge John Tsoho has issued new rules for pre-election cases, directing registries nationwide to remain open on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays exclusively for filing pre-election matters. The new rules also make it mandatory for all pre-election cases to be commenced by originating summons, a kind of suit that relies on affidavit evidence instead of calling witnesses. The winners are litigants who benefit from faster resolution. The losers are lawyers who must now work weekends.
The question is whether the speed will compromise the quality of justice.
In the South East, the guns have gone quiet. Attacks and killings linked to IPOB and other pro-Biafra groups declined significantly in 2025, about one year after Simon Ekpa was jailed in Finland. Ekpa was sentenced in September 2025 to six years’ imprisonment for participating in a terrorist organisation and publicly inciting crimes for terrorist purposes in Nigeria’s South East. He committed these offences from Lahti, a city in Finland. The court found that he had supplied terror groups with weapons, explosives and ammunition through his network of contacts in the region, and that he encouraged his followers on X to commit crimes in Nigeria.
The decline in attacks since his imprisonment is notable. It suggests that one man, operating from a Finnish city, was able to direct or inspire violence in Nigeria’s South East. Remove him, and the violence drops. But the decline is not a solution. The underlying grievances, marginalisation, poverty and perceived injustice, remain. Ekpa was a symptom, not the disease.
The South East is quieter. That is not victory, it is a pause.
And finally, the numbers that will make even the most hardened investor wince. The Nigerian stock market just recorded its worst monthly loss in history. Investors wiped ₦13.29 trillion off listed equities in June 2026. That is more than the entire market was worth during the COVID-19 crash of March 2020. The All-Share Index fell 8.28% during the month, its biggest monthly drop since President Bola Tinubu took office. The selloff was broad-based. All 20 NGX indices tracked finished the month lower, many with double-digit declines. Premium Board stocks, UBA, Access Holdings, First HoldCo, Zenith Bank, MTN Nigeria, Seplat, Lafarge Africa and Dangote Cement, bore the brunt of the correction. This was not a rotation into defensive sectors. It was a stampede for the exit.
The rally that preceded June was extraordinary. April had delivered a 20.36% monthly return, the best since May 2009. Those who rode the wave in are now leading the charge out. Retail investors who bought at the peak are holding the bag.
I keep thinking about that man in Zamfara, paying ₦1,878 for a bus ride. The market lost ₦13.29 trillion in one month. That is a number so large it stops meaning anything. But the bus fare, that means something. That is what happens when transport costs rise faster than wages. When getting to work becomes as expensive as the work itself.
The algorithm does not wait for the ballot box to catch up. Neither should Nigeria. But as we stare down AI misinformation, pre-election court battles, simmering grievances and a stock market in freefall, I wonder if we are looking at the right things. The bus fare is real. The market loss is real. The quiet in the South East is real. The question is whether we will address the root causes or simply wait for the next crisis to emerge.
Think about that as you pay for your transport today.
Warmly,
Lola